Today was long. Left late after waiting for delayed breakfast. We walked only 22km but kept stopping waiting for lost stragglers which made it hard to get a stride. I thought of Stevenson with his donkey Modestine but it wasnt Beagle who was tripping us up; he had 'his Monday stride'.

Last night we set all the books out for everyone to browse and the librarians sat up late reading to one another and others that joined.

I did a reading along the walk from Oswald's the Dart on the boats at Dittisham beside the canal in Turnhout up to Simon from Writes & Sights who was dangling his boat sculpture over the side of a pedestrian bridge above.

We also made some wonderful stops yesterday - to listen to silence of an area voted world's 12th most silent places - the Liereman - a place of peet bog and leech infested lakes and a castle inhabited by a ghost. There was a piano left by an artist next to a picnic table and the guide performed Cage's 4'33 and Amanda revealed a hidden talent. Then a stop for a free local beer made with the plant that grew in the area - gageler - the one I sketched the night before. Then ice cream that people line up for on Sundays made from the excess milk of local kleins. Stopped in the priory of Corsendonk where Erasmus studied but they wouldn't let us see the library as it was 5 pm by then. But I'm not clear that there were any books still there. The restored 15c buildings are now a centre for team building, weddings etc and a hotel for the wealthy. We were allowed to see the hall named for Erasmus but it was merely a function room deadened of any sense of history or life.